The Elizabeth line is rewriting the UK’s rail station usage charts
Terminus stations usually dominate the annual chart of Britain’s busiest railway stations, but the Elizabeth line is upending everything, with Tottenham Court Road now the third busiest station in the entire country.
The latest figures are the first full year to include the full Elizabeth line and demonstrate its impact on rail travel, as several central London stations surge up the league tables boosted by Elizabeth line traffic.
After entering the Top 10 for the first time in the previous year, Tottenham Court Road leaps four places, gaining just under 30 million entries and exits to take third place from London Waterloo. London St Pancras drops out of the top 10, while Bond Street is a new entry, going from 19th most used last year, to ninth this year. London Paddington retains second place by adding an additional six million entries and exits.
This isn’t just people switching between rail services, as a recent TfL board paper suggested that around 30% of the Elizabeth line journeys were ‘new’ demand which would not have been made without the existence of the Elizabeth line, or mode shift from non-public transport.
The surging popularity of the Elizabeth line, and how it encourages people to switch to public transport will be held up as another example of how investing in public transport across the entire UK will see a shift change in how people travel for work and pleasure.
The top stations in the UK
| Rank | Station | Entries and Exits | Rank last year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | London Liverpool Street | 94.5 million | 1 |
| 2 | London Paddington | 66.9 million | 2 |
| 3 | Tottenham Court Road | 64.2 million | 7 |
| 4 | London Waterloo | 62.5 million | 3 |
| 5 | Stratford (London) | 56.6 million | 6 |
| 6 | London Victoria | 50.8 million | 5 |
| 7 | London Bridge | 50.0 million | 4 |
| 8 | Farringdon | 46.0 million | 9 |
| 9 | Bond Street | 38.3 million | 19 |
| 10 | London Euston | 36.2 million | 10 |
The busiest stations outside London
The busiest stations in England outside of London were Birmingham New Street (33.3m), Manchester Piccadilly (25.8m) and Leeds (24.9m).
The busiest stations in Scotland were Glasgow Central (25.0m), Edinburgh Waverley (21.3m) and Glasgow Queen Street (14.5m)
The busiest stations in Wales were Cardiff Central (11.5m), Newport (2.7m), and Swansea (2.2m).
Although the ORR figures don’t include Northern Ireland, that wouldn’t change the overall UK-wide rankings for busiest stations.
The quietest stations outside London
Denton in Greater Manchester, with just two services per week, is the least used station in Great Britain (and England), recording 54 entries and exits in the latest year, up from 34 entries and exits. That’s a title it will lose next year as being the quietest station always sees a surge of visitors, which promptly knocks it off the chart next year.
In Wales, the least used station was Roman Bridge with 680 entries and exits, taking the title from Sugar Loaf station.
Scotland’s least used station was Kildonan, with 240 entries and exits, beating out Scotscalder (with 242 entries and exits), the least used last year.
Two stations – Stanlow and Thornton, and Teesside Airport – recorded zero entries and exits this year, but both had services suspended for the entire year, so they have been excluded from the rankings.
The fact that Whitechapel is now no12 is the craziest
It’s busier than Birmingham New street.
That might even change the Monopoly board !
Sad to see that London Bridge is falling down (the chart)!
Without the previous years numbers in the table it’s hard to comment.
It could be that LBG increased its numbers but that others just increased theirs more.
Previous figures here (for ChrisC below)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_railway_stations_in_Great_Britain
Several figures have gone up without the benefit of the Eliz line, but not by as much.
Hopefully figures like this will convince the government that Crossrail 2 will be worth every penny. The economic effect on central London must be huge.
I am pleased the Elizabeth line ia a success and seems to have taken some people off the roads. Some Londoners may not know that Greater Manchester and the West Midlands have no underground metros. Unfortunately excessive expenditure on HS2 betwen London and Birmingham means it will not reach the North West. This means that local services and freight on the railway lines it would have bypassed cannot be increased, unless a cheaper alternative is approved. Until then, Northerners have to thank the Stephensons for the Victorian infrastructure we are still using.
A bit misleading as tube numbers are included at some stations (TCR) but not others (Waterloo)
I have no idea where you read that, but tube ticket sales aren’t included in the LENNON dataset used to calculate the top stations — so you need to go back to the other place and tell them they’re wrong.
The Elizabeth Line isn’t officially part of the Tube. It’s neither owned nor operated by London Underground Limited. Instead, it’s considered part of the National Rail system, although the track is owned by Rail for London Limited (a different TfL subsidiary) rather than Network Rail. Hence, the usage figures get reported as part of the National Rail system, not the Underground figures.
Time to rewrite the Green Book
I’m not convinced by these figures. Maybe I’m being stupid, but how do they know I got off at Liverpool St from the Elizabeth line rather than Central? Also if I go to Liverpool Street, I have to exit the station to get on the Overground or other line, so would count as an exit and entrance for 1 trip, whereas if I simply got the tube to Waterloo, I’d only have 1 entrance counted when getting on a train? Doesn’t seem like a reflection of how busy the stations actually are.
It’s based on ticket sales data — so if you buy a ticket to get off at Liverpool Street, then you’re counted. Otherwise you’re not.
But Ian, the majority of “ticket sales” on the Elizabeth Line, and across the London region, are on Oyster or Contactless. These don’t distinguish between modes, so surely there might be some double counting going on?
If I tap in at TCR I can tap out at a multitude of destinations without any data being able to determine whether I used the Elizabeth Line for all or part of that journey or not. Some arbitrary criteria must be being applied somewhere.
Certainly some journeys can be calculated as being via the Elizabeth Line simply based on time. If I touch in at Abbey Wood at 6:38 and touch out at Paddington at 7:02 for example.
(Touch here includes paper tickets like my first journey on the Elizabeth Line above on opening day)
For relations like Stratford – Liverpool Street I would think that the data is based on estimates on what percentage of passengers use either of the direct lines. I doubt that they for individual trips use times for check-in and check-out and correlate with at what time trains ran at the time the trip was made, and I also doubt they collect data on average speed between ticket barriers and trains for each user.
In most cases one option is probably the obvious one, and anyways there are so few such hard-to-estimate cases that they won’t distort the data that much.
Most people are on travel cards with no specific destination/origin
But even using a travel card you have to tap in / out or put your paper ticket through the machine so they know your entry / exits.
What aren’t counted are tickets like some of mine where I can get a ticket with travel card from Brighton to London and use it to travel to LHR.
I only put my ticket at the gate at Brighton. It’s not scanned at e.g. Farringdon and more often than not the gates at LHR are open so any entry / exit there isn’t recorded either,
ORR quotes a 31-page report by STEER on the methodology of these ‘estimates’. Including the Elizabeth Line overstatement adjustment. If you can understand it, have a go.
It’s fascinating that these figures include adjustments to *reduce* Elizabeth Line numbers! I wonder how large the unadjusted figures are!
It would be interesting to see the data if transfers between rail, and between rail and other “higher capacity transport”, are ignored and thus major starting and end points for travel are counted, but not the forced changes. That would be very useful for planning how a long term future network ought to look like.
My main takeaway from this is that Farringdon needs more than two card readers between thameslink and crossrail.
On the southbound platform it needs to be near the lift up from Lizzie.
Is there a summary Elizabeth Line overstatement adjustment? EL is about 30% of Liverpool St traffic, and a 30% new demand would add 10% to Liv St. SE Londoners working around the City would be new traffic diverted from LB. West End workers who might previously have changed at Stratford may have been squeezed out and found a more comfortable interchange at Liv St. By exiting and entering the EL they are interchanging but no longer shown separately so double counted?
There should have been a large reduction in number from EL passengers to Moorgate or Farringdon no longer changing at LivSt. Some reduction from Central Line passengers that previously avoided the Stratford crush by utilising LivSt disembarkers’ space or just limiting their exposure time to standing crush loads.
We do need to see some analysis of the figures when comparing to a 30% decline at Waterloo.
Liverpool St 2019–20 65.98m – interchange 4.35m
2022–23 80.45m – interchange 5.66m 2023–24 94.5m
Stratford 2019–20 41.91m – interchange 4.88m
2022–23 44.14m – interchange 5.52m
2023–24 56.57 m – – interchange 5.54m
Waterloo 2019–20 86.9m – interchange 6.31m
2022–23 57.79m – interchange 4.66m
2023–24 62.52m – interchange 5.01m
Nice to see Parson Street train station in South Bristol has increased its footfall yet again.Parson Street the station for those attending music and sporting events at Ashton Gate,the home for football and Rugby.